VLC for Windows 8, Win Phone 8 Kickstarter hits fundraising target

The VLC team has announced on its Kicstarter project page that it has accumulated over £40,000. This was the set target for further Windows 8 / RT and Windows Phone 8 development to take place, as well as consumers being able to download VLC from the Windows Store sooner. It's an achievement that illustrates the strong backing the free media player has.

But the fundraising hasn't halted however. The team will use all excess funds above and beyond the £40k to speed up the development process to bring the app to Windows Phone 8, since it's stated the extra capital will enable the team to parallelise the workload of the ports to Windows 8 / RT and Windows Phone 8.

As well as a huge thank you for the support displayed thus far by the community, the VLC team revealed some additional features that will be worked on full-time after the initial release is complete:

Camera Input Support enables users to record anything connected cameras can see and stream it live

Integration with locally attached devices for media playback and synchronisation

Smartglass support

The team has previously kept everyone who has been following the Kickstarter project up-to-date with some concept screenshots of how the finished product could look like. We were impressed by what the team had come up with and VLC is an extremely popular media player, one which we feel would do well on the Microsoft Store (as well as Windows Phone!).

So while a VLC app for Windows 8 / RT and Windows Phone 8 isn't going to be released tomorrow, it's great to relay the announcement that the project has reached its fundraising target and development will kick off in the new year. 2013 is going to be big, we can feel it in the bones.

If that means being able to play and stream mkv files on WinRT and WP8 that will greatly help adoption and switching from android devices. If only Microsoft were smart enough to throw a bit of their huge pile of marketing money at it to help develop it even faster.

Last time I checked the lame Video app didn't support mkvs, let alone all the further stuff that comes with it: multiple audio tracks, subtitles etc. People also like to control the size and shape of the video, use keyboard shortcuts to control playback and playlists, adjust audio/video sync. MS video app won't support that ever.

MS has already stated they've dropped licensing to bring down the cost of the Win8 OS - their video app is something that functions and has some nice features - but by no means did they aim to compete with products who's sole purpose is to provide those services.
It's the same reason a steel mfgr doesn't do welding - they don't want to compete with their clientelle. MS is providing a store - and app development isn't as key as having app availability.

I'm ok with dropping DVD and TV codecs from Windows 8. But Windows Media Player is still there, it stil supports DirectShow codecs, and after you install ffdshow it is actually usefull for movies.
Windows RT's Video app is a joke in comparison.

I don't think any version of Windows has ever supportted mkvs... why would they start now? Granted, I sure wish they would... I use subtitles a lot and that is the only format that supports them properly for some reason.

I like to watch movies at night after the family has gone to bed and I need the subs to not boom them out of the house!

This seems like a money grab. The codebase isn't going to magically be rewritten from what it is today. In fact, outside of integrating the Windows 8/WP8 services, the bulk of the development will be the front-end toolkit implementation. Maybe they'll hire a few extra developers to speed up their efforts, but a full fledged fundraising effort for a port whose codebase should be significantly similar to windows 7 doesn't sound quite right.

"This evening, we crossed our goal of £40,000. Thanks again for your generous support and for allowing us to realize our project! Any further money coming in will greatly speed up the availability of our port of VLC to Windows Phone 8, since it will allow us to parallelize the workload of the ports to Windows 8 / RT and Phone."

Clearly, they don't actually know how SmartGlass works, because unless they have a 360 application (which they don't), they can't have SmartGlass support.

The DLNA-based "Play To" function is not SmartGlass. SmartGlass streams content directly from the internet to your 360, and the tablet/phone becomes a remote control. Considering they have no 360 app (and most likely never will), that's not going to happen here.

It's nice that you looked into your crystal ball and somehow were privy to every conversation between the VLC team and MS. Is it really so farfetched that there is eventually going to be more to Smartglass and that just maybe MS is going to add more features that apps can tap into? I don't know about you but I can't see MS not tapping into the potential to allow win 8 apps to connect to Smartglass at some point.

There's no "connecting to SmartGlass"... You run the SmartGlass app on your tablet, which is a glorified remote control for the 360. Some 360 applications that have their own SmartGlass experiences within them will then trigger an HTML page to run inside that remote control interface to show more content there.

Unless Microsoft is fundamentally changing everything about how SmartGlass works, which they're not, the developers are not going to be able to use SmartGlass. You wouldn't want them to, either. What you really want to be able to do is play a video on your tablet, use the devices charm, and then send that to your 360 or DLNA compatible TV, which they mention elsewhere that they want to do (and other apps for Windows 8, such as PowerDVD Mobile already do). That's a great feature, but it's one that's entirely different from SmartGlass.

I understand what you're saying but my question still stands, is it not possible that Microsoft might allow 3rd party applications to utilize Smartglass in a different way from what we've seen so far? Not arguing with you but genuinely curious about other possibilities since I feel the concept around Smartglass has the potential to spawn a lot more than what we've seen at the moment.

Of course we in Europe celebrate Christmas Day too but isn't Christmas Eve more important than Christmas Day when we gether to eat Christmas Dinner? Or do people in other place eat Christmas Dinner in Christmas Day? :confused:
Edit and add:
Christmas Eve is the fun part of the Christmas: you eat a big dinner and get your presents and play with them till the late of the night; Christmas Day is boring day: you're tired and you have that indigestion from last evening's big dinner to nurse, and you don't get Christmas Presents for the next 364 days...

Here you might go clubbing on 24th and spend time with friends but 25th is the day you open presents, eat a huge meal and relax. Then there is boxing day the 26th a day for watching sport, films and chilling.

In Australia, and probably the US & UK, we don't do anything on Christmas Eve. It's a normal day really. Traditionally presents are opened on Christmas morning and a big Christmas lunch or dinner with the family is later that day. Australians often go to the beach & have BBQ's because it's usually hot (39 degrees for me in Perth). It's very common to eat a lot of seafood & cold meats.
Also lot of people meet up with their extended families on Boxing Day as it's a public holiday, but Christmas Eve isn't.

Am not able to tell when it'll roll out, yes... I know sooner than it could have with the funding, but a ballpark would help, can't wait to watch files with srt support (that's included, right?) on my Lumia 820